This thesis combines an academic investigation and creative writing practice in an attempt to understand the politics at work within mainstream notions of working-class masculine identity, and the role of literature in these discourses. Beginning with an academic analysis, the formulations and intersection of class and masculinity are outlined, explicating how systems, implemented by the middle-class creation of values, form social narratives whereby men of certain settings with associative lifestyles and practices, are privileged over other less valued groups of men. In this respect, its concerns are primarily with the socio-symbolic. Locating this discourse within an Aristotelian dichotomy of the mind and the body, this theoretical position is then applied in the scrutiny of six mainstream fictional narratives of two historic periods, each originally held to be politically subversive. In calling to question the validity of these original claims, further questions are raised regarding the nature of the mainstream fictional narrative at large, and whether it is an effective way of representing the politics of working-class identity, or whether, by its nature, it serves to reproduce its working-class characters as fixed subjects, immovable from their positions in a stable class system. This line of inquiry is then further explored in the deconstruction of my own creative work, in which I initially sought to represent the concerns of my own working-class heritage. The resulting issues raised with respect to mainstream, linear narrative leading to the investigation of other potential forms of representation for the working-class male, culminating in the exploration of my own shifting identity in a non-linear, multi-directional collection of poetry.

Autofiction has been the subject of much critical investigation in France, yet little of this theory extends to contemporary texts. Furthermore, autofictional theory has, until now, neglected the study of ludic performance – an important feature within the genre –, and this thesis contributes to filling this gap in criticism. Through this analysis, I establish the genre's construction as well as the constitution of the autobiographical persona in the autofictional texts of four authors. I argue that in order for autofiction to be considered as a genre, ludic strategies and autofictional personae are critical factors in the genre's construction. I build on previous scholarship of autofiction before discussing the performance of autobiographical personae producing an autofictional body in the works of four contemporary French writers: Catherine Cusset, Philippe Vilain, Chloé Delaume and Éric Chevillard. Each author is analysed in a dedicated chapter exploring their autofictional œuvres, yielding three key trends. These are: the proliferation of intertextual references, ludic representations of the genre, and the creation of an autofictional body by the reader through autofictional personae. In each chapter I examine the construction of these personae, revealing a separation between selfhood constructed in language and questions of the body, both of the autofictional personae as well as characters within the text. Other characters within the texts expose complex constructions of gender that range from a rejection of male characters to the homogenisation of female characters reduced to stereotypes. Depictions of the intimate sphere within autofiction, including relationships and gendered constructs, are analysed in order to situate autofiction as a genre. Through the discussion of autofictional personae pivotal in this conception of autofiction, this thesis posits that representations of the body – within and beyond language – are the key to understanding autofictional performances.

Esta pesquisa tem como orientação principal o debate sobre o lugar do Facebook como um monopólio comunicacional e suas possíveis consequências. Está organizada em quatro aproximações que, relacionadas, respondem a questão da afinidade entre imagens, dramatização e produção de valor na fórmula comunicacional disponibilizada aos usuários pela plataforma, fazendo com que a realidade individual e coletiva passe por um filtro tecnologicamente mediado, e que seja apreendida e (auto)reflexionada por intermédio dessas relações. De tal maneira, a abordagem do problema e a proposta analítica passam pela relação da imagem com o eu, a ficção, a própria imagem e o suposto estatuto de imortalidade. Como resultado, por meio do fetichismo metodológico, a tese debate diferentes camadas narrativas da decorrente ficcionalização da vida, passando pela (1) produção de si; à (2) incursão de si na realidade e sua interpretação; à (3) produção dos fatos e a transformação da realidade em registro; ao (4) mercado de imagens e pessoas. / This research has focused primarily the debate on the place of Facebook as a communicational monopoly and its possible consequences. It is organized in four approaches that, related, answer the question of the affinity between images, dramatization and production of value in the communicational formula made available to the users by the platform, causing the individual and collective reality to pass through a technologically mediated filter, and that is apprehended and (self) reflected through these relations. In such a way, the approach of the problem and the analytical proposal go through the relation of the image with the self, the fiction, the own image and the supposed status of immortality. As a result, through methodological fetishism, the thesis discusses different narrative layers of the resulting fictionalization of life, from the (1) production of self; to (2) incursion of oneself in reality and its interpretation; the (3) production of facts and the transformation of reality into ledger; and the (4) market of images and people.

Esta pesquisa tem como orientação principal o debate sobre o lugar do Facebook como um monopólio comunicacional e suas possíveis consequências. Está organizada em quatro aproximações que, relacionadas, respondem a questão da afinidade entre imagens, dramatização e produção de valor na fórmula comunicacional disponibilizada aos usuários pela plataforma, fazendo com que a realidade individual e coletiva passe por um filtro tecnologicamente mediado, e que seja apreendida e (auto)reflexionada por intermédio dessas relações. De tal maneira, a abordagem do problema e a proposta analítica passam pela relação da imagem com o eu, a ficção, a própria imagem e o suposto estatuto de imortalidade. Como resultado, por meio do fetichismo metodológico, a tese debate diferentes camadas narrativas da decorrente ficcionalização da vida, passando pela (1) produção de si; à (2) incursão de si na realidade e sua interpretação; à (3) produção dos fatos e a transformação da realidade em registro; ao (4) mercado de imagens e pessoas. / This research has focused primarily the debate on the place of Facebook as a communicational monopoly and its possible consequences. It is organized in four approaches that, related, answer the question of the affinity between images, dramatization and production of value in the communicational formula made available to the users by the platform, causing the individual and collective reality to pass through a technologically mediated filter, and that is apprehended and (self) reflected through these relations. In such a way, the approach of the problem and the analytical proposal go through the relation of the image with the self, the fiction, the own image and the supposed status of immortality. As a result, through methodological fetishism, the thesis discusses different narrative layers of the resulting fictionalization of life, from the (1) production of self; to (2) incursion of oneself in reality and its interpretation; the (3) production of facts and the transformation of reality into ledger; and the (4) market of images and people.

A consistent feature of Saul Bellow???s fiction is the protagonist???s encounter with one or more teaching figures. Dialogue with such individuals prompts the Bellovian protagonist to reject his current state of selfhood as inadequate and provokes him to re-form as a new person. The teacher figure offers a better self to which the protagonist is attracted; or, more frequently in Bellow, the protagonist is repelled by both his teacher and his own current state to form a new, previously unrepresented self. This thesis argues that Bellow???s self inherits and modifies the perfectionist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in a literary reinterpretation that parallels Stanley Cavell???s philosophical revaluation of the American Transcendentalists. In Emerson and Thoreau, and in Cavell???s reading of perfectionism, the self is attracted onward only by a better representation of selfhood in another, while Bellow???s self may also be, and often is, provoked by a repellent other to inhabit a new form of selfhood. This thesis takes the evolution of selfhood in Bellow to be structured by travel. In The Adventures of Augie March, Augie???s movement between selves is impelled by conversation with teacher figures and paralleled by his unending journeys. In Herzog, Herzog???s self-transformations and travels are provoked by reading and writing, and by the ecstasy of loss revealed to him through apostrophic conversations with the dead and absent in a series of unsent and mental letters. Letter-writing, the provocation for Herzog???s self-perfection, becomes a form of travel in Herzog. This thesis further argues that Bellow???s travelling self is a critical response to two poles of modern subjectivity, structured by European mythologies of travel: Bellow???s fiction is critical, first, of a Hegelian, egoist mode of selfhood structured after the Odyssey; but equally critical of examples of Levinasian openness to the Other, patterned on Abraham???s exile. Bellow does not accept either the Odyssean or the Abrahamic mode of selfhood on its own, recognizing oppressive possibilities in both. Travelling selfhood in Bellow, initiated by conversation with others, both fuses and rereads Odyssean and Abrahamic constructs within a new, but perpetually unfinished American mode of selfperfection.

This thesis examines the major thoughts on anthropology and selfhood from Plotinus in the third century and the Cappadocians in the fourth, situating the anthropology of the Cappadocians in the much broader context of their culture and their major works. It argues that: i) The inherent unity of all things, intelligible and material, provides the basis for radically intuitive categories such as synchronity, telepathy, and even love. ii) The ontological essence of expressed particularity in the divine or the human is an ekstatic relationship, i.e., it involves the transcending of the boundaries of self, a self identified as hypostasis or person. iii)Truth consists in apprehending that true being alone possesses existence in its own nature, participated in by all without being lessened and knowable only as and in relationship. Human being is participation in existence by an experience of communion. iv) The most essential activity of historical self is to use one's inherent capacity to form one's own identity in relation to the other -- both external and within -- as incarnational and dialogic beings. The findings of this thesis are that the relational notion of authentic human being grounded in open-ended divinity provides both a useful framework and the distinctive characteristics of human beingness for rethinking what it means to be a human being in the twenty-first century.

This thesis examines the major thoughts on anthropology and selfhood from Plotinus in the third century and the Cappadocians in the fourth, situating the anthropology of the Cappadocians in the much broader context of their culture and their major works. It argues that: i) The inherent unity of all things, intelligible and material, provides the basis for radically intuitive categories such as synchronity, telepathy, and even love. ii) The ontological essence of expressed particularity in the divine or the human is an ekstatic relationship, i.e., it involves the transcending of the boundaries of self, a self identified as hypostasis or person. iii)Truth consists in apprehending that true being alone possesses existence in its own nature, participated in by all without being lessened and knowable only as and in relationship. Human being is participation in existence by an experience of communion. iv) The most essential activity of historical self is to use one's inherent capacity to form one's own identity in relation to the other -- both external and within -- as incarnational and dialogic beings. The findings of this thesis are that the relational notion of authentic human being grounded in open-ended divinity provides both a useful framework and the distinctive characteristics of human beingness for rethinking what it means to be a human being in the twenty-first century.

In Dharma Bums (1958), by Jack Kerouac, and Americana (1971), by Don DeLillo, the authors explore the complexity of selfhood as pertaining to individual identity and subjectivity in mid-twentieth century American culture and consciousness, paying specific attention to the relation that these concepts have with media, spatiality, and Buddhism. Although numerous critics provide extensive analyses of these texts, authors, and themes, no critic has paired these texts and authors, and investigated these particular themes in relation to selfhood. I argue that in Dharma Bums and Americana, Kerouac and DeLillo each investigate the influence of media, spatiality, and Buddhism on selfhood, as well as provide competing models of selfhood that offer either self-transformation or self-limitation.

A consistent feature of Saul Bellow???s fiction is the protagonist???s encounter with one or more teaching figures. Dialogue with such individuals prompts the Bellovian protagonist to reject his current state of selfhood as inadequate and provokes him to re-form as a new person. The teacher figure offers a better self to which the protagonist is attracted; or, more frequently in Bellow, the protagonist is repelled by both his teacher and his own current state to form a new, previously unrepresented self. This thesis argues that Bellow???s self inherits and modifies the perfectionist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in a literary reinterpretation that parallels Stanley Cavell???s philosophical revaluation of the American Transcendentalists. In Emerson and Thoreau, and in Cavell???s reading of perfectionism, the self is attracted onward only by a better representation of selfhood in another, while Bellow???s self may also be, and often is, provoked by a repellent other to inhabit a new form of selfhood. This thesis takes the evolution of selfhood in Bellow to be structured by travel. In The Adventures of Augie March, Augie???s movement between selves is impelled by conversation with teacher figures and paralleled by his unending journeys. In Herzog, Herzog???s self-transformations and travels are provoked by reading and writing, and by the ecstasy of loss revealed to him through apostrophic conversations with the dead and absent in a series of unsent and mental letters. Letter-writing, the provocation for Herzog???s self-perfection, becomes a form of travel in Herzog. This thesis further argues that Bellow???s travelling self is a critical response to two poles of modern subjectivity, structured by European mythologies of travel: Bellow???s fiction is critical, first, of a Hegelian, egoist mode of selfhood structured after the Odyssey; but equally critical of examples of Levinasian openness to the Other, patterned on Abraham???s exile. Bellow does not accept either the Odyssean or the Abrahamic mode of selfhood on its own, recognizing oppressive possibilities in both. Travelling selfhood in Bellow, initiated by conversation with others, both fuses and rereads Odyssean and Abrahamic constructs within a new, but perpetually unfinished American mode of selfperfection.

This artistic inquiry was conducted to explore specific processes in dance making and expand upon how I use my own history in the choreographic process. For my Movement Project Shedding Skin: Expose, Educate, and Evolve, I address my phenomenological experience as an African-American choreographer residing in Oregon. I expanded my choreographic processes after conducting a personal interview with choreographer Gesel Mason based on the Oral Historian Association's interview techniques and analyzed the creative process used by Mason in creating No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers. This information and that gathered from utilizing the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process in choreographic feedback sessions led to the culmination of three solos, which I choreographed on my dancing body. These works address my identity through exploring African-American culture, identity in new environments, and experiences with racism, bias, and stereotypes. My Movement Project video footage is included as a Supplemental File.